To Know Who I Am
by TheMacUnleashed
Summary: ESB missing scene: Han comes to realize that perhaps he doesn't know Leia as well as he thinks he does. Takes place on the flight to Bespin.


**Title**: To Know Who I Am  
**Author**: TheMacUnleashed  
**Characters**: Han Solo, Leia Organa.  
**Summary**: ESB missing scene: Han comes to realize that perhaps he doesn't know Leia as well as he thinks he does. Takes place on the flight to Bespin.  
**Notes**: Written for The Love Song Roulette at the JCC forums. I got the Goo Goo Doll's Iris, and the lyrics that I used for inspiration are below. Concrit appreciated -I'm not used to writing this pairing, or writing romance in general.

_And I don't want the world to see me  
Cause I don't think that they'd understand  
When everything's made to be broken  
I just want you to know who I am  
I just want you to know who I am…_

_

* * *

_

It was the silence that finally prompted Han to say, "Something to drink, Princess?" It was awkward and it didn't show any signs of ending. Chewbacca, who was currently in the cockpit, could certainly feel it, and that was probably why he had refused to let Han be the one to keep watch in the room that could only comfortably seat one–Wookiees tended to be far more in-tune with the emotions of other people surrounding them than they were usually given credit for—and even Leia's prissy golden droid seemed to be picking up on the tension, and had decided to deactivate, hopefully for a long time.

"That would be nice, thank you." She glanced up at him, and away from the data-pad she had been studying; probably a review of the Rebellion's bases and battle strategies. He couldn't imagine her just sitting down with a novel and reading for the sake of reading. Not that he was criticizing of course; that would be hypocritical of him, given that even Chewie liked reading more than he did, and Chewie had a questionable grasp of reading Basic, at best. Leia just seemed… focused on the Rebellion and its battles, that was all. For the three years that he had known her, he couldn't recall ever seeing her at any of the gatherings that were held between battles. At victory celebrations, perhaps, but even then, she never stayed for long.

Han stood from up, stretching; he had been tinkering with the circuitry to try to get the lights to glow in a more steady manner, rather than their constant flickering. "What do you want?"

He wasn't exactly running a bar, but there was plenty of water, and a few bottles of the stronger stuff, kept around for several reasons: to celebrate his piloting feats, that was one, and in case he found himself in a tight spot; where credits wouldn't break him loose, one of the vintage bottles often could. Plus, when he needed a favor or shelter, they could help him to sweeten the deal a little.

"What do you have?" She seemed to have returned part of her attention to the data-pad, and didn't notice when Han raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't peg you for much of a drinker."

"You hardly know me." She didn't sound annoyed –no, distracted would be a much better way to put it- but the words still carried a sting.

"Hey, I've known you for three years. That's got to mean something." He knelt and began to remove several false floorboards.

"Well, we haven't exactly been having heart-to-hearts." She looked away from the data-pad again. "Probably somewhat of a blessing."

"That doesn't mean that I don't know you." He dug out a bottle, glanced at the label, and decided that it would do fine; it still had some time to go before it could be considered rare.

"Will a bottle of Celen's finest red wine work?"

"Of course." Finally, she set aside the data-pad and gave him her full attention as he carefully poured out two glasses. It was a rough ride, with the hyperspace drive not working as it should have been, but Chewbacca had been flying them smoothly, and he would have felt rather uncivilized pouring the wine into anything less than fancy-looking goblets (they weren't nearly as expensive as they appeared, but with any luck, Leia wouldn't be able to tell that.)

"Thank you." Leia reached for hers, waiting until after he had filled both of them and taken a seat across from her.

"So you really think that even after all of this, I don't know you?" He took a small sip of the perfectly bitter wine, trying to distract himself from how accusing he sounded. He hadn't meant it to come out like that: certainly, she had said plenty of things to him that were worse during the dozens of verbal sparring matches that they were constantly in, and there was no reason why he should be bothered by her offhand accusation now.

Right? What had happened before; what Threepio had interrupted… it was nothing, not really. They just hadn't spent much time alone, that was all. Luke usually tagged along with them, and they weren't certain of how to act without his constant presence to buffer their arguments.

"'All of this?' What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Rescuing you from the Death Star? Destroying the Death Star? Bringing down more of the Empire's bases than there are stars in the sky?" The kiss? No, of course not. He had kissed plenty of women before, especially in high-risk situations like the one that they were still in. Moments of passion, and all of that; he hadn't been thinking clearly.

"As I remember it, I ended up having to help save you because you were too prideful to suggest jumping into a garbage chute." Leia rubbed the stem of her glass between two of her fingers. "Of course, there's no reason to be keeping score."

"None at all, although you still owe me." He hurried on before she could respond to that. "Isn't that enough? What else do you have to go through to know a person?"

"You really think you know me?" Leia set her glass back on the table, a smile playing at her lips. "Fine. If you're really such an expert, answer three questions about me."

"Just three? I could do a dozen, any day." He leaned back, confident. "Bring them on."

"And if you can't, I get to ask you three questions, about yourself. And they won't be nearly as easy as the ones I'm going to ask you."

Han had to admit, he was impressed. She knew how to drive a bargain that would've impressed many of the galaxy's sleazier merchants. Granted, that shouldn't have been nearly as surprising as it was, given that he knew of all her success negotiating in the Senate, but she didn't usually use her skills when he was around. "Fine. It's a deal."

"Fine. What's my favorite color?"

"That's the best you can come up with?" He didn't get an answer, only a raised eyebrow and a wave of her hand to answer the question. "It's..." oh, he knew this. "Blue." That was right; he had seen her give a necklace, expensive and gaudy, to a wife of one of the pilots. It had been from a suitor, with a Frithian emerald at the end. She had said that she preferred sapphires much more, and whatever part of the brain that it was that tucked away loose information had remembered that.

"Right." She nodded, not giving him any time to savor his victory. "Next, when I was young, where did I go when it was winter in my sector of Alderaan?"

"You went to Naboo, until you were ten." She had told him and Luke about that when Naboo's underground representative had been visiting. Neither of them had known where the planet was, and she hadn't wanted them to seem ignorant before the dignitary. Not that she had said it in that many words, but she hardly ever shared details about her personal life, and why else would she have brought it up? "After that, you went to the Alderaan's southern hemisphere for most of the winter. You had a vacation home there, and-"

"Okay. You have two out of two so far; not bad." Leia emptied out the final drops of wine in her glass and leaned forward. "So, here's the last one, and if you can answer it, then you probably know me better than I'm giving you credit for: when I was a child, what did I want to be when I grew up?"

He had been swallowing the final droplets of his wine, and he nearly choked. "You've never talked about that!"

"Yes, I have. To Luke, and you were standing right next to us. You heard."

"Hearing isn't the same thing as listening."

Leia didn't bother to debate the point which, admittedly, he knew was a weak one. "Admitting defeat?"

"Never. When you were a child, you wanted to be..." he stared into the empty glass, willing the small, ruby drops to help him out of this one. "...a princess who fought evil."

"Close. I wanted to be a Jedi when I was younger." As soon as she said it, his mind flashed back to the conversation she had cited earlier. Of course it had been with Luke; he didn't have any particular care for the old superstitions that they could talk about for hours, and of course he hadn't remembered that little tidbit of information: virtually everything that he heard about the Force went in one ear and out the other quicker than information on Tatooine moisture farming.

"That _was_ close. Very close, I'd say." Close enough to count, certainly.

"I'm afraid I can't agree with you. I have three questions to ask you, and you have to answer them -unless you're not a man of you word?"

"That's a low blow." He gritted his teeth and leaned back, arms crossed. "Me, dishonor the good name 'Solo?' When that happens, you can... you can have three more questions."

"I've got six and counting, then. Although I think that three's all that I need." She tapped the base of her wineglass lightly against the table, imitation-glass clicking against the hard, white surface. "What did you want to be when you were older?"

Han relaxed as best he could, given the circumstances. "A hero."

"A hero?" She raised an eyebrow, looking surprised to the point where Han was almost offended. "I never pegged you as the type to want that."

"I'm full of surprises." He glared defensively, biting back under Leia's scrutiny.

"I guess so. Next..." she paused. "When we were destroying the Death Star, why did you come back?"

"This again? I would have thought you had forgotten about that by now." Not really, of course. Every single detail of everything that had happened that day was etched forever into his mind, and for as long as he lived and even if he forgot everything else, even if he could no longer tell what color his hair was or remember what his mother's name was, he would be able to relive that in vivid detail. He didn't know how that could be any different for Leia, even if she hadn't been up in space with him.

No, he had just said that to buy himself a bit of time. Why he had come back, that was the only thing he couldn't remember. He knew exactly how fast the _Falcon_ had been flying; exactly how many TIEs he had taken down in how many shots, but _why_ -that was the damning question.

"Not yet." She hadn't taken to his stalling tactic very well.

"Because I wanted to. A bit of excitement." It wasn't a witty response, and it wasn't that thorough, but it was as honest as he could get without actually knowing the answer. Close enough, and she didn't need to know everything.

"Really? You had your reward already. Why would you want to?"

He knew that he should be glad to have such a persistent leader being in charge of the Rebellion, but kriff it if that wasn't an annoyance as often as it was a reward. "Because I wanted to, Princess. Anything else you need to know?" He stood up, not able to pinpoint the cause of his annoyance. "I'm sure Chewie could use a bit of help piloting, and we'll be coming to Bespin soon."

"Yes, actually. I have one left." Leia got to her feet, eyes blazing in response to his irritation, which might not have been fully warranted, but was there all the same, and it wasn't about to leave. "You kissed me before."

"And you kissed me back. What about it?" He crossed his arms, caught a glimpse of his wineglass on the table, and uncrossed them to reach down and pick it up, ready to store it away until he needed it again.

"Did you mean it?"

"Of course I meant it!" His hand tightened, and the stem snapped. He ignored it.

Leia started at the sound of the glass breaking before following his suit and stepping forward, until she was well less than an arm's length away from him. "Prove it."

She was so close to him, and she had never looked more beautiful than she did right now, beneath the dim throb of the _Falcon's_ lights. Even in their dusky glow, he could see the fire in her eyes as he spoke, and maybe that was why he couldn't think of a better response. "How do you want me to do that?"

Leia shook her head. "You're a fool, Solo." She closed the miniscule distance between them, until her arms were reaching up and cupping the back of his head, and her torso was against his, so close that he wondered if she could feel his heart beating. "I want you to kiss me again."

"You didn't need to ask." He leaned down and cupped her chin in his hand, and pressed his lips to hers, and they remained that way for quite some time.

When they finally broke apart, there was only one thing that he needed to say. "Do I know you now?"

A smile played at her lips. "You're getting there."


End file.
